At dawn on October 8, 1999, crew member Max Yarawamai, a lookout posted at the bow of the voyaging canoe Hokule'a, sighted Rapa Nui (Easter Island)--a speck on the horizon, visible through a small hole in a wall of clouds. The canoe landed the next day, completing an amazing, improbable 19-day, 1,450-mile voyage from Mangareva to the most remote and isolated island in Polynesia. The twelve-member crew under navigators Nainoa Thompson, Chad Baybayan, and Bruce Blankenfeld had expected to sail against the wind for thirty-five days, navigating by celestial bodies and ocean swells and searching thousands of square miles of trackless ocean for a tiny island. Instead, blessed by favorable winds--a gift of their ancestors--they sailed directly east toward Rapa Nui for most of the way, and sighted the island on the first pass. Landfall at Rapa Nui brought closure to Hokule'a's twenty-five years of exploration and rediscovery of Polynesia which began in 1975, with the launching of the canoe at Hakipu'u-Kualoa in Kane'ohe Bay, O'ahu. Click here for thoughts of the three navigators--Nainoa Thompson, Bruce Blankenfeld, and Chad Baybayan--on finding Rapa Nui and reaching the third corner of the Polynesian Triangle.